as when last the solemn mass was sung for the spirit of
some departed hero. There it is, hollowed out of the rock, with its
chancel and its transept, while near it are lodging-rooms of various
kinds; and underneath vaulted stables capable of containing perhaps
twenty horses. The well, too, that essential ingredient in a
strong-hold, still remains, though now it is dry; and on the back of
the kitchen fire-place the soot and smoke of other times have left
their traces. The only innovations effected, indeed, in the original
arrangements of the castle, are those which the hermit began; and which
the father of the present lord, the Count Kinsky, of whom I have
already spoken, has completed.

The history of the Burgstein, as far as I have been able to trace it,
is this. The name being a combination of the words birke and stein,
signifies the birchy-rock, an appellation which both now and in remote
times, would appear to have justly belonged to it, for its crest is
overgrown with birch trees, one at least of which is as fine a specimen
of the plant as it would be easy to discover either in Bohemia or
elsewhere. Its bold and isolated character seems to have pointed it out
as a fit situation for one of those keeps or strong-holds in which even
monarchs were, during the middle ages, glad at times to seek refuge,
and which constituted the groundwork of their power to chiefs of less
elevated rank. So early as the year 1250, a castle accordingly was
erected on it, in which the Baron von Ronow, a nobleman of vast
influence, held his court, and frequently entertained the King of
Bohemia himself, Wenzel I. By the caprice of his grandson, however, it
passed into the hands of the Knights Templars, who established there
one of their chief colleges, and, according to tradition, enacted many
and horrid rites, such as tended not a little to hurry on the ruin of
their order. When that catastrophe befel them, the sovereign seems to
have restored his prize to a noble of the same lineage with him who
willed it away, so that down to the year 1515, we find it in the
possession of a long line of Placek von Lippa und Berksteins. But heirs
male at length failed, and the heiress marrying a Baron Kollowart, the
lordship of this noble keep was transferred to a new line, which
transmitted it from father to son in uninterrupted succession, down to
the year 1670. To them succeeded, somehow or another, a race of Von
Rokortzowas, who again in 1710, made way